


When You See Us, Bow Your Head (Nothing Left Behind Us But Dread)

by Arkie



Series: DJ, Turn Up The F*king Sound [UMY Garbage Court] [6]
Category: Hat Films - Fandom, The Yogscast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Evil plots, Urban Magic Yogs, but then, isn't all evil?, only evil cause of perspective tho, umy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 14:30:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19175233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arkie/pseuds/Arkie
Summary: "I've never used the magic like this," he murmured, more as a warning than anything.Smith shook his head, near bouncing on the balls of his feet, eyes aflame with a ferocity Ross desperately didn't want to let down. "Doesn't matter. Doesn't mean you can't."-The remainder of the court go looking for their missing member, and meet something powerful.





	When You See Us, Bow Your Head (Nothing Left Behind Us But Dread)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from No Defence by NOONE

"It was locked," Smith insisted. "It was  _locked_." 

He was sat in space of the apartment that served as a living room, by the kitchen. His leg bounced beneath his elbow. The pent up urge to move, to  _act_ , with no course to take. Otherwise completely still. 

"Guess they broke it," Ross mumbled. He remained standing, hovering nearby, his hands clasped on his elbows, holding himself together, holding himself up. 

"No. No, you don't understand." Smith shook his head, his fingers jittering. He didn't look at Ross. "It was locked _magically_. And not the type of magic that can be... got around. Manipulated. No one who doesn't live here can open it. It's the same magic that's on the front door. On the entire apartment." His voice shook. 

Ross stayed quiet for a moment. "I opened it," he pointed out quietly. "Before."

"That was different. That time I'd been an idiot. I'd left it open accidentally." Smith sent a surreptitious look to the door leading to rest of the apartment. "That was before Sips was here," he finished very quietly. 

Ross nodded silently. He understood. 

Neither of them moved for a long moment, Smith's jittering aside. Stuck, frozen. They couldn't figure out how they got here, so they couldn't figure out how to move forwards. 

Some amount of time later, Sips appeared, came to lean on the doorway with a great sigh. "You know that weird little ball?"

They both looked at him, waiting. 

He nodded. "It's gone."

Smith stared for a moment. "That must have had something to do with it," he breathed, eyes wide and movements gone still. "It must've...  _done_... something. It had-- Runes--" He cut himself off, sounding strangled. 

Sips nodded. "Yeah." 

"Wait," Smith said suddenly. "But- if it- I don't know,  _activated_ , at some point... then...  _maybe_..." 

He leapt to his feet and rushed past Sips, down the hall. Sips raised a brow in his wake. He glanced back at Ross, questioning, but Ross didn't respond, hesitating before dodging around Sips and hurrying after Smith. He didn't know what Smith had just thought of, but if he thought they had some chance...

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sips throw up his hands in exasperation. 

Ross found Smith in Sips's room, and was immediately beckoned inside. Smith looked alive, really alive, for the first time since their prior discovery, movements wild with vigour. "Ross, look - can you see it? Or- feel it, or- or-" He pointed frantically at the top of the dresser - at the empty space exactly where the small magic ball had sat. 

"What?" Ross asked, in almost the same instant he realised. 

"A remnant," Smith breathed, as a wide grin spread across his face. 

"Of what?" Sips grumbled, walking in, irritated being the only one left out of the know. 

"Spells always leave a remnant," Smith murmured, walking closer to it. "A spell is just a mass of focussed energy, without tangible form. That much energy, localised in one place... If it isn't cleared, it sticks around, sometimes for a very long time." He hovered his hand just outside the vague sphere of siphoned energy, fingertips just brushing its bounds. "Trott was always better at this than me, but..." He took a gulp of air and pushed his hand inside, fingers splayed and palm open, and closed his eyes. 

Ross watched effects, how the energy responded his prying, morphing and introducing in swirls of heaviness. Sips was watching too, but he was frowning in bemusement - he clearly couldn't see or even sense anything. How strange it must be, to be so blind. 

"It's a locator spell," Smith mumbled after a few moments, opening his eyes. Then he frowned. "It's a _locator_ spell." 

The implications sank in, and then he and Ross both turned to Sips. 

Slowly, in understanding, Sips's gaze squinted to glare coolly back, and tipped his head to one side. 

"Speak up, then, Smiffy," he said, with an enforced sort of lightness, casualness. "What are you saying?"

Smith swallowed. "They wouldn't be able to find this apartment themselves," he began slowly, looking guarded. "Because this is a home of fae. It's unplottable, mostly. So... If they planted it in your family home, Sips, an unguarded home of humans..." He trailed off. "Maybe they knew you'd take it here. That's how they slipped it past our defences."

After a moment: "Are saying that this is _my_ fault, Smiffy?" Sips asked, his tone low and dangerous. 

Smith averted his gaze, back to the empty spot. "No," he muttered. "No more than the rest of us. For missing it."

But then he was frowning, focus returning to the problem at hand. "It was dormant at first, though. It wasn't activated until yesterday. It had to be done manually. I just don't understand  _how_." 

He fell silent, frustrated, and may have worked himself into oblivion had Ross not interrupted quietly. "Can you trace it?" 

Smith shook his head. "No. I don't have enough of a connection. Maybe if I still had the selkie skin, assuming it and Trott are in the same location..."

Then he stopped and stared at Ross with an intensity that struck him with self-consciousness. He wasn't sure what Smith was about to say. 

"Maybe you could, though," Smith said, and took Ross by surprise. 

"Me?"

"You have a connection to us both," Smith explained, half to himself. Sounding slowly more sure of himself as he went on. "A bond. It's not selkie magic, it's gargoyle magic, and I suppose they're not... _really_ all that different." 

Ross supposed he had a point, but... "I can't track locations or anything through that, though. It's not strong enough. Not nearly." 

"No," and Smith pointed to the faint sphere of energy, starting to smile now. "But you have this." A heady, hopeful, half-crazed kind of smile. Eager, he beckoned. "Come here." 

Hesitating, Ross stepped up to the dresser, full of nerves but wanting to trust Smith. 

"Do what I did," Smith instructed. "Hold that bond with him in your mind, but thread it _through_ the spell. Make it..." he made a spastic hand motion, "focus it, help pinpoint it." He was full on grinning now. "We'll use their tricks against them."

Ross bit his lip. He looked down at the ball of lingering magic, aware of it less with his eyes and more with another sort of sense. He really wasn't sure he could do this. He stretched out a hand, lingering just outside the verge.

"I've never used the magic like this," he murmured, more as a warning than anything. 

Smith shook his head, near bouncing on the balls of his feet, eyes aflame with a ferocity Ross desperately didn't want to let down. "Doesn't matter. Doesn't mean you can't."

Ross pushed his hand into the sphere. 

Eyes closed on the exhale, he tried to relax into it, soothe the tingles and sparks into allowing him entry. Tried to sort the mess of where he ended and the world began. That was the problem with magic. It wasn't clear-cut and nice as it often was in those fantasy books of the humans'. It was messy, and random, and overlapping and vague.

Through it, he tried to follow the connection to Trott in the mesh and meld, to sort between the layers of pulls in a million different directions that may not have been there at all. It wasn't easy to tell the difference between what might have been an inkling and what might just be feeling what he wanted to. He may be a creature of magic, but this wasn't his field. He was a creature of unspoken magics, things that happened inevitably, whether he or anyone intended them to or not. No less magical, but less obvious and therefore, considerably less malleable in its presence. 

But, slowly, he felt more sure that he felt a lead, a tug. No real directions or specific locations, just an odd awareness that there  _was_  a place, somewhere, just outside his consciousness. A place awaiting him, holding what he sought. He fought and pulled for more, but the more he reached out, tried to grab it, to force it, the more he drifted away, out from the hubbub of magic, with a sense of offence he wasn't sure came from the magic or from him. 

With the feeling he may have just been thrown out, he opened his eyes, frowning, and withdrew his hand. He looked up and found Smith fixed expectantly on him. 

"Well?" Smith asked, immediately. 

For a moment, Ross forgot to respond, forgot how to. Partially still a little caught up in the world of blurring magic and energy, partially suddenly unsure what the honest answer was. "I got... something. Maybe." 

Smith raised his eyebrows, tensed, and Ross felt uncertainty churn in his stomach. "How much of a 'something'?"

Ross tried to quench the nerves. Curled his hands into fists at his side and stood a little straighter. "I... think I could lead us there." 

Smith went a little slack, perhaps in shock. He stared, as though he hadn't at all really expected it to work. 

"Alright then," he breathed, after a moment, sounding a little breathless.

* * *

The drive was odd and winding, with Smith constantly demanding more specific directions and Ross trying his best to provide while running more off feelings of 'this way' and 'not this way' and 'this _general_ way'. Streets and towers flew past, and the late afternoon traffic of wheels and feet seemed to skip out of their way without more than a glance in their direction. Soft light filtered with red, pooling in windows and dark pools on the tarmac and pavement at the edges of their vision. If it seemed ominous, it wasn't mentioned. The city was known to be fond of having fun with its traversers, throwing towards them signs and indicators, playing with their fears and wishes in hope of entertainment. Smith and Sips had long adjusted to it, looked straight past it all with only a trace of annoyance. Ross, much less used to it, tried not to feel unsettled. 

When they got there, it was with less of a fanfare and more of a feeling of emerging from a sludge, blinking awake to find themselves pulled up at the curb of a road, with a palace of cream marble towering sky-scraping at their side. It may have been squashed between two other buildings, it may have not been. All else had been draped in a sort of fog, clouding the world but for this one place, its vined majesty an undoubtable destination and nothing else. Ross wasn't sure if they were still in the city, or if they'd long since left. The trip may have taken hours or minutes, or something else entirely. He didn't bother a glance at the clock lit up in the dashboard - it couldn't be trusted with such things. 

The single grand door stood before them. It looked to be made of wood, but not the breakable kind - something much more solid. He had a feeling not the heaviest force in the world would have it open were it not wished by its master. 

Which made it nerve wracking when it swung open before them, allowing them entry easily, expected. 

Inside, smooth cream floors spread, soft and slick. Vines of leaves and green and brown spread thick upwards across the walls didn't take away from the structure, the strength. They added to it, a part of the whole. Drawn inside by the promise of it all, they drifted soundlessly, as though floating on planted feet. Ross was surprised to realise he was in front, pulled ahead by his own feet. But then his eyes caught on something. He stopped. 

A strand of vine on the wall looked odd to him, for a moment. The image from his eyes didn't mesh with the image in his mind. Like a memory. It was green and alive, but it wasn't - no, its leaves had a heavy brown tinge to them. A few had fallen off, to the soft stone ground. Like some time had passed since he'd last been here. But he'd never been here before in his life. Had he? 

"Ross, what is it?" Smith had stopped too, to watch him oddly. His voice was low, a whisper. It was instinct. This place felt a lot like a church, their mission aside. That eerie quiet, just slightly unnatural. As though any sound made is an intrusion - first amplified, accusatory, and then forced away, absorbed, as though in admonishment. 

"I don't... know," Ross breathed back, unsatisfactorily, embarrassed to be holding them up for no discernible reason. He glanced back once, before tearing his eyes away and hurrying after Smith. Sips was silent. 

Through secondary inner doorway, the hall opened up before them, widened into a raised, circular sort of stage. There, a man awaited them. 

His pose was slouched, hands in his pockets, and when he glanced at them, looking quite bored, Ross revised his first judgement. He couldn't call this a man - this was a boy, probably barely of legal age. Blonde and painfully human, or mostly. He had a tinge of _something_ about him. 

He smiled, then, wide and full of amusement, as if he found something very funny they didn't know.  

"Ah, so you _did_ come," he drawled, brows raised, swaggering towards them. "I wasn't sure, if I'm honest. Hey, Ross." He shot Ross a finger-waggling wave and a friendly little tilt to his lips. 

In the gap where Ross tried to figure out how to respond to the stranger's unsettling greeting, Smith spoke instead, from their forefront, low and warning. "And who are you supposed to be?" 

The boy grinned at him, as if delighted to be asked. "Call me Strife. _Will_ Strife." 

Smith kept his eyes on him, still and guarded. Ross could tell he was working a mile a minute, flicking through options, making sense of what was before them, decide the best course of action. "This place doesn't belong to you." 

" _No_ ," Will Strife agreed with a shake of his head and a smile. "It belongs to the Master." 

Smith watched him for a moment. "Was it you who broke into our apartment?" 

"Mm," Will agreed. "Nice place. That was a joke. It was a shithole."

Smith frowned, intent, unwilling to be distracted. "How did you get into the trunk? It was locked." 

Will chuckled. "That's the problem with locks. They only work when they are, in fact,  _locked_." Then he laughed harder, clearly finding this statement hilarious. 

Smith ground his teeth. Then clearly couldn't think of any way around it and spat out, "Where is Trott?" 

"Oh," Will said airily. He didn't sound remotely surprised. "He's here, somewhere." Then, while Smith reeled at the easy admission, he continued. "Congrats, you found your missing party member. You can leave now." He made a shooing motion, expectant. 

Slowly, Smith shook his head. Fury building in the tension of his shoulders. "Not without Trott." 

Will sighed, grandiose. "Listen, I'm really just here to tell you not to waste your time. The selkie's ours now. But don't worry - if you're lucky, maybe we'll let you have his body back after we're done with it. Would that" - he made an obscene motion with his hips - " _satisfy_  you? Still, y'know,  _functions_ , right?" He was grinning. 

Smith's teeth were grinding, hackles raising, lips pulling back into a snarl. Fists clenching, fingernails digging in, rigid and shaking. Ross might have moved to calm him, to try and stop him from doing something stupid, if he weren't reeling at the sickening words himself. 

Ross was almost kind of impressed when Smith spoke, instead of just attacking.

"You," Smith snarled through his teeth, "will give him to me, _alive_ , and I won't _rip your flesh from your bones right now where you stand_." 

Will laughed and raised his brows. "Oho,  _fighting words_ , big boy. Care to try?" He flicked his fingers upwards and suddenly his very slight  _otherness_ was explained - white light zipped between his fingertips with a  _snap_ , coiling about his hands. He could manipulate electricity. 

Smith growled, leaning forward at the taunting; fists curled, teeth bared. Will grinned back, unfazed and delighted. But just as Smith went to take the potentially extremely ill-advised step and lash out: 

" _ENOUGH_ ," a new voice ground out, low and rolling. In the same instant, a  _BANG_ rang out - the double doors farther still down the hall had flung open and cracked against the wall on either side. From their centre, a sweeping figure strode forth, and this time it was  _definitely_ no human. 

Ross felt a  _zing_ run through him at the sight, and he flinched. No one noticed. 

Seven foot tall, maybe more - eight, nine; draped in a cloak of dark and browns and moss; horns, curled slightly, like a goat's, long and and black and ribbed. A face of the ages, gnarled and narrow with a billowed top, furred slightly; eyes flat and black and spread apart, sunken on either side of the huge head by flared ears; nostrils low and slitted and flared over a parted mouth on what was essentially the snout. A goat's head, more or less. If something foul had taken the rough idea of a goat and given it back muscles and and broad shoulders and opposable thumbs. 

"Will," the creature ground out in a deep rumble. "You were supposed to get rid of them. Not start a fight in my main hall." 

It stood and stilled before them in the direct centre of the raised platform. Will flitted to its side, sulking in a smiling sort of way. He hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans and spun back around to face them, grinning, and it struck Ross how incredibly ordinary a teenager he might have looked, if it weren't for his ease at the side of such a hideous beast. 

"You three are unnecessary," it rumbled, black eyes on them. "You may leave. Ross may stay if he wishes."

It said this as if this was a perfectly ordinary statement. Nothing odd about it. 

Smith looked up at it very carefully, guard back up. "Why him?" 

The beast looked coolly back at him. Or, it looked like it did. It was hard to tell, with those flat eyes. "You don't think I managed this all by myself, did you?" 

Ross felt something twisting in his gut. 

The beast - the  _Master_ , in fact - shook its head, slightly. No expression showed on its face. "No, Ross performed well on this task. He is welcome back in my home." 

The words were new, unexpected, but Ross felt no surprise at them. And that horrified him. His mouth fell open, reeling. The room faded into a flood of awarenesses. Puzzle pieces, fitting together at last. 

 _He'd_ left the trunk unlocked. He remembered now, sort of. Vaguely. Though the memories almost didn't feel like his. 

 _He'd_ activated the rune ball. Though he probably hadn't known what it did. Somewhere inside him, the urge to reach out and touch it had been irresistible. The imprint of an order from weeks before. 

That was why he'd felt drawn to Trott and Smith's club in the city. He'd felt  _drawn_ there because  _he'd been_ _sent there_. 

Choked, he darted a look at Smith. Smith looked back at him. Searching, frowning slightly. Likely looking for some hint of the betrayal implied, of something other than the person he'd come to know over the past weeks. Ross didn't feel it. He just felt terrified. He felt like he couldn't breathe. 

This was all because of him. 

"You..." Smith murmured, frowning, and fear wracked Ross. Then Smith turned to look at the Master, eyes wide and brows drawn, with a look of unwanted dawning. Pieces falling into place for him too. " _You_..." 

"If you're quite done," the creature began, low and flat, seemingly without knowledge nor care of the revelations so suddenly dropped, but almost as quickly Smith spoke over it.

"Just tell me _why_ ," Smith snapped, as his eyes went dark and mouth curled back into a snarl. Understanding settling. Ross felt dimly panicked at his side. Smith didn't look at Ross. "I get that you're some fucking lord of darkness or some shit, but you've gone to all this trouble - what the _fuck_ is your problem with us? With _Trott_?" 

The Master grumbled, deep in its chest, annoyed, before deigning to answer. "It's nothing personal. I need a selkie. Yours was convenient." 

Smith gaped a moment, a fish out of water. "He's not  _mine_ ," he snarled.  

The Master raised a brow at him, skin stretching oddly over animal bone structure. "You had its skin hidden in a locked trunk. The selkie was yours. Your sort may not be the most well educated on such subjects, but even one such as you must know that that is how it works." 

As Smith gaped at  _that_ bucket of ice water, momentarily speechless, the Master tilted his head, and spoke in an idle rumble to their other member. "Have you nothing to say, King? You are their lord, yet you have yet to make any statement known." He sounded faintly curious. Neither respectful nor disrespectful. 

Ross looked at Sips - he'd almost forgotten he was there, fading deliberately into the background. Sips shrugged, didn't seem fazed. Spoke in a similar monotone to the beast before them. "Why speak and put oneself in harm's way when one has soldiers to do it instead?" 

Will sneered at the implication but didn't speak. The Master rumbled, and Ross had the impression it was faintly amused. "You are a wise human. You must have learnt much from your fae companions for such wisdom."

Sips smiled, vaguely. "Or have they just had to yield under the weight of it?"

"Mm," the Master hummed in reply. It sounded faintly impressed. Then it turned back to address them as a whole. "We have no further business here. If you are finished causing a fuss, you are all excused. Will, if you will escort our guests to the exit..." 

Will looked faintly annoyed, but didn't protest, as the Master turned to leave. Ross saw, from the corner of his eye, Smith opening his mouth, about to snarl something horribly offensive that he could guess the nature of, and he knew wouldn't get them anywhere. So Ross spoke suddenly, over him. 

"If I stay," he blurted out, and the Master glanced back at him, "could I see Trott?" 

The Master looked coolly at him. Ross felt pinned. Those blank black eyes held such a weight, an oppressive heaviness, that he felt could have crushed him into the floor if it was so intended. 

"You may," the beast rumbled, with an assenting nod, and it didn't sound like a relent. More like something that perhaps should have been obvious. 

Ross felt a rush of elation. If there was some chance, now, for him to do some good...

He shot a look at Smith, beside him, and found Smith looking straight back, blue eyes wide in shock. Ross couldn't read him, reproving nor glad. He wished they could speak, so he could assure Smith that he'll do what he can, _anything_ he can. 

Seeing this, the Master continued, idly. "You may return to your new friends afterwards if you wish. I hold no sway over you now. Your task has been fulfilled." 

And now that he mentioned it Ross realised he felt it - the weight, the slight presence inside him he hadn't noticed in the past few weeks, was gone. 

"C'mon losers," Will called idly, and turned to walk off, in a direction Ross noticed wasn't towards the front door. It was to the side, through another set of wide, grand doors. Through them, as they opened, he glimpsed a cream, high-ceilinged corridor, that looked a lot like the one behind them. 

Smith noticed too, and frowned. "Isn't the door back there?" He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. 

Will paused to smile, mysteriously, at him. "Oh, you don't want to go that way." And continued off. 

Probably in fear of losing him in the doubtless maze of corridors, Smith moved to follow. But he sent Ross a very particular look as he passed - one of cautioning, but also, he daresaid, hope. Smith was desperately worried, terrified for Trott's sake. But he didn't want Ross to get himself killed either, and there was warning in his gaze. But, in the end, he let him go, and didn't protest. Trusting Ross to do what he can. 

Ross had the slightly delirious impression that he'd just been on the receiving end of one of those mysterious looks Smith and Trott shared.

But then Smith had followed Will into the perpendicular corridor, and Sips ambled after him without a glance back, and the door slammed untouched behind them. 

Ahead, the Master's cloak swept out of the room through the large doorway. 

And Ross stood alone, in an empty, silent place he had vague few memories of, yet, somewhere in the hidden recesses of his mind, he knew like the back of his hand. 

**Author's Note:**

> It felt incredibly weird to write an entire part completely missing one of our main three. Anyway. 
> 
> So some time around writing the first or second part, I had a thought: What if Will & Kirin, but _after the fact?_ Fully-fledged evil duo living in mysterious partnership in a palace, there you go. 
> 
> Also yes, Will did just James Bond-style his intro. Bc he may be a villain but he's also a fucking nerd.
> 
> Only one part left after this! Shit's gunna go dowwwn... There is, however, a halfwritten prequel already in the works, so that may well reach you sooner. 
> 
> Thanks for the reblog Three! And the 'highly recommended' tag, you have no idea how much I've been fangirling over that. Welcome to everyone who's come over from tumblr!


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